Way it should have been
by Golden Fires
Summary: Rei was abandoned, Sunohara has issues, Tomoya hates his life, Tomoyo's family just picked up the pieces of it's existence, Kotomi was isolated and forgotten, Yukine is still dealing with her brother's death, Kyou, Ryou, and Fuko are well...Kyou, Ryou, and Fuko. But together at the same time may lead fate into a new direction: the way it always should have been.


_**A.N.**__: I just came up with this idea off of the top of my head and decided to pursue it, more or less because the idea refuses to leave me alone until the idea finally hits the screen on which you currently read. The idea was simple, after the clannad anime was done, how in the name of god did Tomoya not end up with a certain someone. I mean, at the end of her arc in the show, I almost expected the romance to kick off like a rocket. So, this is why "what if"_

…_enjoy…_

_**CLANNAD**_

_**The Way It Should Have Been**_

**Chapter 0**

**異なった目的同じで日間**

**Kotonatta mokuteki, onajide kakan (Different Purpose, Same Days)**

**(Two Years prior to the CLANNAD anime)**

Tomoya walked around the town at night. Usually he was not this nervous, or prone to late-night wanderings of the town he felt indifferent of. The town had taken his mother and kept the father, with whom he argued with constantly, alive for him to suffer for seemingly the rest of their known lives together in the same household. The streetlights that lined the right side of the darkened road sparkled constantly in the seemingly hazy sky, or maybe that was the illusion of his sleepy mind.

The night's silence dragged on as the abandoned, but incredibly clean, streets seemed to stretch into infinity, the foliage on the side of the road being the only indication of distance in the coming sea of space. Tomoya swatted at some of his bangs to brush them out of his eyes and continued down the street. After a certain distance was reached, he heard someone screaming. But the scream was not that of fear, it was that of anger. Pure, unrefined, untamed anger. That in which Tomoya understood as if it was a foreign language, as one being of tormented screams to another, this was the message that was portrayed and well received.

The Primordial scream was followed by a stream of English in which Tomoya understood one or two words, but those were all he needed to understand: Dad, Me, Left, Alone…kill. Tomoya heard the pounding that soon followed, each pound resulted in the rattling of chains and more screams of anger and torment. The sounds grew louder as Tomoya approached an industrial-like home, the type that would be built solely for the families of the workers that would be employed by the nearby construction company. Most of them were run-down and uninhabitable and all would sell for relatively cheap, but so far…no one wishes to live here. To actually be in this district and hear a soul from the houses besides creaking and fluttering was a supernatural phenomenon in of itself.

Tomoya slowly approached the house and heard the noises come from the back yard of the fourth house down from the main street's intersection that lead into the neighborhood. The house itself was not run-down like the rest of the houses in this neighborhood; strangely this house looked better kept then his home. The lights in the house were non-existent, meaning the noise was probably coming from the backyard.

Then a familiar thought washed over his tired mind, 'Why should I care?' Tomoya paused at the door and thought carefully. Why should he care? He thought for a good three minutes but only came up with one answer, "because this person's like me."

He slowly made his way past the broken, cracked, and hinge-less door that lied to the side of the entry and into the massive overgrown backyard. The grass was almost knee-length and brown making a soft rustling noise as he slowly walked over. Tomoya saw the true nature of the backyard for the first time once he entered an opening in the grass where it had been cut away. The backyard had over grown everything made by man in the backyard: play sets, swings, and patio furniture, even the concrete below the kid's feet. Everything except a pile of wood, where every piece had a hook on it. He saw why when he saw the kid: about slightly taller than five feet in height by a very rough approximation, he had very short brown hair and green eyes that he could barely see due to the angle attacking a punching bag with extreme strength and speed as if he had been doing this for a long time. The bag creaked loudly and the wood snapped from above almost landing on the kid, which he had jumped back as soon as the sound was heard. The kid sighed and placed the punching bag on the next hook, of which the roof of the patio was littered with. The boy grabbed the wooden board that had recently fallen and sighed. The boy then turned to toss the board, as soon as the boy did so, he saw Tomoya. The board landed with a thud, but silence returned with earnest and remained there as if an old friend who did not wish to leave.

Tomoya spoke in Japanese, "Hello." But the boy simply grabbed the pad of paper and pencil that was sitting on a table out of Tomoya's visual range, so Tomoya entered into the center of the yard in order to see. Tomoya then saw that the boy was writing. The boy turned the pad and the note read, "I cannot speak the language well, but I can write and understand it while listening well."

"Okay then, what is your name?"

The boy grew fearful in his facial expression and timidly began to write, "Why do you wish to know?"

"So I don't have to call you buddy, man, kid or as the English say it, "Dude". Never understood that really"

The boy relaxed only relaxed the tiniest bit and then looked insulted. He wrote, "HEY! I'm American, lay off the English jokes…name's Ryan. I gave up my last name because I am insulted to be related to the other man who bears it…" The book trembled in the boy's hands as he was reminded of that father of his.

"What did this man do? Name's Okazaki Tomoya."

"Long story and I am not ready to say…wait, is Okazaki your first or last name, I blame American ignorance in general for not knowing…"

"Last…can I at least know your last name, Ryan-san sounds slightly awkward…"

The boy deeply contemplated his knowledge sharing of his last name. Tears actually began to well in the kid's eyes as presumably the memories invaded his every thought. Tomoya was about to say that an answer wasn't necessary until he finally wrote, "Reisuka…Reisuka Ryan… Man I hate my name…"

"Then why don't we change it, a nickname of sorts…Rei-san?"

The boy contemplated it for a while then wrote, "yeah. Sounds good, Okazaki-san. Can (pause in writing) you teach me to speak the language?"

"Can you teach me English then?"

"Yeah. And how to fight…" Rei wrote again. This time, half a smile grazed over his face.

"Deal." The two continued idly chatting by this method, Rei writings to Okazaki's talking, until the two both fell asleep, Reisuka in his chair, Tomoya on the pavement against the punching bag. Though neither expected it, this friendship would have consequences, both good and bad, on the years to come.

Because in the world where friendships are everything in this world, where your family is the primary anchor to success and sanity, where even the smallest changes can have a change so massive it can alter the way it was supposed to be to a way it always should have always been…

**Day before Tomoya's Third Year**

Fire, that was all. The fire consumed my body, my soul, and my field of visual, but I felt frozen, heartless, and most of all: guilty. I could hear a child screaming, that of a female child, but try as I might I could never find her. Then a tearing sound and then the fires died…

Tomoya awoke with a start and looked at the clock, "five AM again huh? Hey, dream queen? Do you have something against me sleeping, I mean come on?" Tomoya spoke in English. Ever since Rei-san, and later Youhei Sunohara, joined me in my school years group of friend, the group that we claimed to be in was a prosperous one. Normally, one such as I would be labeled a delinquent by this point with the attitude that I had about school. But that all changed in Year 2 of high school…

_"Okazaki! Out of bed…NOW!" Rei yelled in Japanese as he dragged Tomoya out of bed and let him hit the floor. He then smiled softly at the thought of being slightly bi-lingual after a year and a half of studying speak with Tomoya…it kept the too busy…a lot._

_ Tomoya moaned and asked, "Seriously man. Why are you waking me up this early?"_

_ "Because if I don't you idiot, then no one will and you'll sleep in and almost fail like in the first year. Now you and that Sunohara kid will be delinquents from now on unless you change, like my change from depressed kid to a friend, can you make that change?" Rei placed his hand on Tomoya's shoulder, "Dude, I realize that I can't get into the private school, so succeed in my place, okay?"_

_ Tomoya gave a thumbs-up, "You got it man. Wait, why can't you transfer? I mean you have the grades and"_

_Rei cut him off, "I don't have the money and the school just won't let someone like me in." Rei looked towards the ground and sighed. Rei just and sat as Tomoya's facial expression contorted in shock_

_ Tomoya recovered as soon as Rei's butt hit the chair in Tomoya's room, "Someone like you? Mr. Class 1 president! Top 15 in the entire first year class test scores! Good speeches despite limited Japanese! Then good enough to talk to professors in English just to impress them! What Japanese school wouldn't want you?"_

_ "None, but it's a private school for rich kids, and I am not one… It's as simple as that."_

_ "And that Rei…is where you are wrong. So…very…very…wrong."_

_ Rei just smirked and shook his head. Then we walked our separate ways to school._

Rei would continue to wake me up and we would do homework and study our respective languages of interest. Eventually over time, even longer for Sunohara, the delinquency status at my school was lost like the leaves in the wind. Rumors shifted to other things, such as the fact of a transfer student arriving next term as a second year. A delinquent, which somewhat worried me, but not really.

Thanks to Rei, I had made many friends: Kyou and Ryou Fujibayashi, Yukine Miyazawa, Sunohara's sister Mei, and even Sunohara's dorm lady Misae Sagara. Kyou was, well is, very…unique. She will be trying to be my friend one moment and attempting to bash my face in with a dictionary the next. Ryou is Kyou's twin and EXACT OPPOSITE. She does fortune telling, which has slight to no accuracy, ad is extremely shy and is very prone to crying. These fits usually cause pain for either Sunohara or I, though the books, and subsequently the pain, are shifting from me to Sunohara now.

Yukine is the nicest person I have ever met, I met her when I needed a "How to…well, nevertheless, I never found he book. Yukine and I talked and I even forgot that I was one year her senior. She made me tea and a snack from a gas stove in the reference room next to the main library, which had read "closed" at the time.

Mei is very energetic…don't even let her call you oni-chan. It will force you to anything. Misae is a very strange woman in my opinion. She was Hikarizaka's first female president but constrained herself into only being a dorm lady for the male's sports dormitory. She also has a cat that seemingly has not aged a day since she found it when she was in high school. She is very nice woman but can be very violent in her punishments. Many of which can put Sunohara in a pain coma for a while.

Though as the beginning of the third year was approaching, my new friends and I decided to do something for him. We gathered our proof: videos, letters, notes, and photos of Rei being the amazing kid that he was. Kyou even recorded an interview with him under the guise of a school project and presented it to admissions. They took almost two weeks for them to make a decision: They would have him transferred as a third year. We decided to wait until today, four days before the new term in order to tell him. We used his birthday as the launch point. We went to a park in the middle of the triangle that comprised as our homes near Furukawa bakery. He should be here any second now that I think about it.

Kyou and Ryou have cooked some bentos for everyone. Mei and Sunohara were enjoying Mei's last day in the city, so opted to come later. Yukine was there with her gas stove making coffee for all. When the time arrived arose and Rei had not yet arrived I wandered around to find him and then I found him staring into the lake's reflection from the hill above. I waved him down and he sighed, starred once more into the lake and then came down to me, so we could go to the party.

Rei walked towards us and was shocked that this any people showed up for his birthday party. The group of us laughed, joked, and ate until the time came for presents. Rei walked up to each person as they handed him their present. Kyou got him a book on cooking, as he lives alone. Ryou got him a book of fortunes, as she couldn't do it everyday. Sunohara, who had literally ran to the party and tripped and rolled down the hill had gotten him boxing gloves for his punching bag. Yukine had gotten him various snacks. When he stopped at me I handed him a folder. He tilted his head and whispered, "The hell…?"

The folder opened and then was almost immediately dropped as tears dropped soon after. The he screamed and engulfed me in a hug as he screamed his thanks. The folder contained his transfer and scholarship information, though they could only get him as a second year, he had skipped a grade in elementary school, so he would really be correctly placed. Plus, he didn't really mind. He was with his friends now, school was tomorrow, and that was all that mattered. Tomorrow was going to be a great day.

_ Okay people, how'd I do? Crap? Utter Genius? Middle ground?_

_ Also, Did I make Tomoya too OOC?_

_ Third, Whose perspective should this be written from: Rei, Tomoya, or a mixture?_

_ I will also not tell you the pairing unless you PM me for them._

_ I do not do spoilers in the story!_

_ Please review if you can…it's right there |_

_ \/_


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